1.) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to monetization of unused Internet domain names and online advertising.
2.) Discussion of Related Art
Internet domain monetization allows domain name owners to earn revenue from domain names that are unused, e.g. have only place-holder web sites. Currently monetization is accomplished by placing sponsored links on unused domains, also referred to as “parking” a domain. For example the owner of cellphones.com might place sponsored links to destination sites such as verizon.com, att.com, and nextel.com. The domain owner is then paid for every click on a sponsored link, or for every click on a sponsored link that results in the conversion of the end user into a customer on the destination site.
Sponsored links are provided by advertising networks such as Google Ad Words, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and LinkShare. These advertising networks have agreements with advertisers such as Verizon, AT&T, and Nextel. Alternatively, sponsored links are provided by an intermediary, who specializes in optimizing the revenue produced by unused domains. Intermediaries provide sponsored links from one or many advertising networks. There are a number of intermediaries that provide this type of service including DomainSponsor, Parking.com, and Sedo.com.
The main limitation of monetizing unused domains with sponsored links is that it is contingent on end users clicking on links. In many cases only few end users click on the sponsored links and so the domain owner does not monetize the bulk of the Web traffic to their website. For example, in the case of cellphones.com, if 1,000,000 users visit the site every day and only 5% of the users click on sponsored links, then 950,000 of the daily users are not monetized.
Another limitation of monetizing unused domains using sponsored links is that advertisers have their sponsored links placed next to competing services and have to vie for the attention, and clicks, of end users.
A different type of advertising network is provided by TrafficRouter.com. TrafficRouter sells electronic real-estate on websites. Customers can purchase banner advertising space or text advertising links on various websites that register with TrafficRouter. Customers bid to gain the right to have their banner shown on another website or to have a link on another website point to their destination site. The TrafficRouter model also suffers from the limitation that website owners, or domain owners, are only paid when end users click on banners or links. Furthermore, it does not allow advertisers to fully own the user experience.
U.S. Patent Application 20010034657 shows a system that allows domain owners to sublicense sub-domains, also known as third-level domains. For example, the owner of house.com could sublicense chicago.house.com or philadelphia.house.com. This model has two significant limitations. First, it is much more likely that individuals surfing the web would type-in a second-level domain such as house.com compared to a third-level domain such as chicago.house.com. Thus, a service that offers access to second-level domains is much more attractive to advertisers. Second, since sub-domains are simply licensed for a fixed fee, there is no mechanism for identifying a fair price for domains.
On eBay, users sell blocks of traffic. For example, a user might create an auction for 10,000 users who will be sent to the winner's website. The winner of the auction receives traffic from various sources, including redirects from unused domains. A problem with this model is that the advertiser does not get to pick the specific domains that will send it traffic. Another problem is that advertisers are bidding for fixed blocks of traffic, so they have to keep buying blocks in separate lots in order to have a continuous level of redirected traffic.
VisitorBid provided another solution for monetizing domains, allowing advertisers to select individual domains, or pre-selected categories of domains, from which to receive redirected traffic. Advertisers entered bids and competed to receive redirected traffic from domains, but could not enter categories themselves. Advertisers also were not provided with geo targeting options. The VisitorBid model, with an advertiser selecting individual domains or selecting from preset categories, is not scalable: It is time consuming to sort through long lists of domains, and requires regular inspection of new domains that become available in the market. Use of preset categories of domains also reduces the granularity of targeting. In addition, the VisitorBid solution suffered from requiring the redirect to occur on the client side instead of the server side. This affects the speed of the domain redirect, because a web page must load within the client browser before the redirect can occur. This gives more time for the end user to close the browser before an advertiser's website loads, reducing the effectiveness of the service.